Esmailin Caridad and Conor Jackson were both activated from the disabled list.

Call Ups and Roster Changes:

Starlin Castro was called up from AA.

Top Stories and This Week’s Links

On Monday, the big news out of Philadelphia was when a 17-year old fan was tasered for running onto the field. Realistically, the response really doesn’t seem like as big a deal as it was made out to be. There’s a reason that the players were pretty happy with the response that was taken. That and probably images of Monica Seles being stabbed and that poor 1B coach being attacked in Chicago those years ago I am sure help them to think this.

On Tuesday, baseball lost an icon of broadcasting, as Ernie Harwell unfortunately lost his battle with cancer. The man was the only broadcaster ever involved in a trade, back in 1948.

On Thursday, baseball lost another Hall of Famer, with Robin Roberts passing away. Roberts was a 5-time 20 game winner for the Phillies back in the 50’s.

Friday was the call up of Starlin Castro by the Cubs, and he came through in a big way. He had a triple, a home run, and 6 RBI in his debut. Clearly he is not going to be this good every game, but it was a definite good start to the career. It was a bit scary to see that he is the first player born in the 1990’s to make his MLB debut.

My A’s are having a hard time drawing fans, which is nothing new. Even with the perfect game thrown by Dallas Braden on Mother’s Day, there were only 12,000 paid attendance, which even to me seems almost high. It’s really hard to get excited about going to the stadium, so realistically that’s a really big portion of a potential audience that they simply can’t draw. Until they get their stadium situation resolved, it’s not going to get better.

Well, we are a little over 1/6th of the way through the season, and we’ve seen quite a bit already. At the end of each month, I will go over some of the larger stories, name my season-to-this-point All-Star teams, and my season-to-point award winners.

All-Star Teams

I plan on following the same guidelines given to the managers of the All-Star game when selecting my teams for each month. Those would be:

34 man rosters, 21 position players, 13 pitchers

Each team must be represented

Beyond that, I plan on not necessarily using any voting that may or may not have occurred yet, because to me, the voting is always biased toward the larger market teams.

Overall, both of these teams ended up being a pretty fair representation I think. For most of the teams, there was at least one clear All-Star. Only with the Athletics and Astros did I really struggle particularly. It is interesting to see just how many excellent performances there were in April.

To me, the stories that really dominated baseball were the emergence of the new rookie class (Austin Jackson, Jason Heyward, Mike Leake), Big Carlos Zambrano being sent to the bullpen, and the struggles of the Red Sox early on. Feel free to look through the weekly links to see some of the other top stories last month. We also saw the hot start of the Rays, and a no-hitter from Ubaldo Jimenez. Nothing quite like baseball.

Chris Getz of the Royals was placed on the disabled list, and Alex Gordon was activated to take his spot on the roster.

Jimmy Rollins of the Phillies was placed on the disabled list, with Juan Castro replacing him in the lineup. Rollins should be out a few weeks.

Esmailin Caridad of the Cubs was placed on the disabled list

Aaron Rowand of the Giants was placed on the disabled list.

Brian Roberts and Felix Pie of the Orioles were both placed on the disabled list. It sounds like Roberts may be out for an extended period of time.

Kelly Shoppach of the Rays.

Aaron Hill of the Blue Jays

Brian Fuentes of the Angels was placed on the disabled list, and Fernando Rodney immediately filled the closer’s role for him.

Also of some note last week was that 2nd year pitcher Brett Anderson signed a contract extension that could take him through the next 6 seasons. Risk on both sides, but I think that the A’s have probably locked up an ace for these next 6 seasons at minimal cost.

Top Rookie Performers

Jason Heyward continues to be the story, as he is now hitting .302/.423/.581 with 3 HR and 15 RBI in just the first two weeks of the season. He finished up last week with a 3-rbi day yesterday, including a walk-off 2 run single. At this rate, I would be shocked if anyone was able to keep up with him for the Rookie of the Year. Jamie Garcia of the Cardinals had a good outing as well, throwing 7 shutout innings during Saturday’s 20 inning matchup.

In the American League, Austin Jackson of the Tigers has gotten off to a hot start, hitting .340/.389/.500 with 9 runs and 5 rbi. Of some concern is the fact that he has struck out 15 times to only 4 walks so far, but he is producing well at the top of the lineup to this point.

Top Stories and This Week’s Links

The biggest story of the week was the first no-hitter of the season, thrown by Ubaldo Jimenez of the Rockies on Saturday. He did this in spite of walking 6 batters throughout the game. And apparently on Sunday he went for a 6 mile jog to help clear his mind for his next start.

The Cardinals and Mets put on a clinic in poor lineup and bench management on Saturday. Their game went 20 innings, during which time the Mets ran out of players, warmed up their closer nearly every inning from the 8th onward, and had the starter from 2 days’ prior come on to get the save. However, the Cardinals won the award for the worst performance, as they ran out of pitchers after the 17th inning. So come the top of the 18th inning, 3B Felipe Lopez was called on to pitch, and managed to get through the inning without allowing a run. So in the 19th, they moved Lopez back to 3B and put the new 3B Joe Mather in for the next 2 innings, where he gave up 2 runs and ended up taking the loss.

Vin Scully marked his 60th year with the Dodgers. He is retiring at the end of this season, and even though I’m not a Dodger fan, it is truly remarkable that Scully has continued to work with the Dodgers for all these years.